Like never before in my lifetime in the race for the most powerful position in the US and arguably the world, have we ever been faced with two candidates that the majority of Americans dislike so much. This is truly an election, at least on the surface, that is for both sides of the isle, selecting the lesser of two evils. But does it have to be?
As of the writing of this blog, both candidates have approval ratings hovering between the teens and low 20's.(1) On one hand, you have a candidate that if she were anyone else would be facing a grand jury indictment for her role in the handling of top secret, highly classified government documents through an unsecured email server. Several top lawyers who specialize in so-called white collar cases, said as much based on their analysis of Comey's comments in his press conference.
"FBI Director James Comey decided to not recommend legal charges against Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server not just because he believed the facts didn’t warrant a case, but also because he feared any action would have a direct impact on the 2016 presidential election."(2)
The other major party candidate, with his 'only I can fix this' attitude, at times resembles someone more along the lines of a Hitler or Mussolini instead of the Reagan his supporters continually compare him to. Even scarier was the reaction to parts of his acceptance speech in Cleveland where you can hear the crowd chanting "Yes you can, yes you can". Chilling; especially coming from a party that was once about the individual and WE as Americans being able to achieve great things, not putting everything into one person, a government figure no less, to do it for us! As a matter of fact, the Republican Convention looked more like what I'd expect from the Democrats and their convention sounded a lot more like what I would expect out of the Republicans!
So where else can we turn? Is there another option? Yes, yes there is indeed. His name is Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate for President of the United States.
I must confess, for full disclosure, that I have been a registered Libertarian for 20 years and the reasons that led me from being a registered Republican at 18 years old until 1996 will have to be left for a future blog where I cover that in greater depth, especially how I jive my Christianity with Libertarian-ism
Gary's biggest problem is not his favorable/unfavorable numbers like it is for Clinton and Trump, it's that nobody seems to know him! That is beginning to change thanks in part to CNN for having not one, but two Libertarian Town Hall meetings on their network, the second one running TONIGHT on the cable giant.
Gary's numbers before the first broadcast were abysmal to say the least. In a Monmouth University poll taken in March of this year, Johnson reached double digits for the first time coming in at 11% but just 9% had a favorable opinion of him while 15% had an unfavorable one. Most incredibly was a whopping 76% said they didn't know enough about him to form an opinion!(3)
However, in the latest polling Gary has climbed to within 2% points of being allowed onto the debate stage and is now at 13%(4) and while his unfavorable numbers increased slightly (from 15% to 18%), his favorable numbers nearly doubled to 17%, up from the numbers in March. Of course that is nearly equal to the numbers of people who still don't know enough about him to form an opinion (65%), but with more exposure (like TONIGHT ON CNN!) his numbers are moving in the right direction. If he gets to 15% in national polls and is allowed to debate with Clinton and Trump, it will be game on for November.
(1)http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/03/us/elections/trump-and-clinton-favorability.html?_r=0
(2)http://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/2016/07/06/comey-clinton-and-presidential-election.html
(3)http://townhall.com/tipsheet/christinerousselle/2016/03/25/gary-johnson-polling-in-doubledigits-against-trump-and-hillary-n2138829
